The Complete List of Jonathan Kellerman Books in Order

A guide to help children cope with such everyday anxieties as going to the doctor or dentist also helps parents to explain more serious matters such as a death in the family.

Doctors believe that they can successfully treat five-year-old cancer patient, Woody Swope. But Woody's parents, members of a cult called 'The Touchers', are not only refusing the treatment, they're also threatening to remove him from the hospital.Psychologist Alex Delaware, is called in to talk the parents round. But before he can, the Swopes are gone and so is Woody. All that remains is a savagely ransacked and bloodied motel room, their teenage daughter, Nona, and an increasingly sinister case to solve.

In the '60s Jerusalem was dubbed 'The Butcher's Theatre'. Decades later and the City of Peace is about to regain that title. The corpse of a young Arab girl has been found - her body violated and then carved up with chilling precision. Sexual murders are virtually unheard of in Jerusalem and the killing throws an already unstable city into turmoil. Chief Inspector Daniel Shalom Sharavi, himself a Yemenite Jew, takes charge of the case. But with political and religious tensions in the city muddying the murder trail, could he be about to lose the killer in the confusion?

You're living on borrowed time . . .

A sniper opens fire on a crowded Californian schoolyard but is killed before any children are harmed. When the sniper's identity is revealed, a media frenzy erupts. Why would they want to take innocent lives?

Psychologist Alex Delaware is brought in to help the kids cope with the ordeal but is drawn into investigating the motives of the would-be assassin. Alex soon finds himself on a bloody and twisted trail into the world of political extremism from which there may be no way back . . .

It's a living hell . . .

Twenty-one-month-old Cassie Jones has spent most of her short life in and out of Paediatrics Hospital. Cassie is persistently, seriously ill and when no amount of testing can identify the cause, her doctor is lead to a disturbing diagnosis - Cassie's mother could be making her daughter deliberately sick.

Child psychologist Alex Delaware is brought in to make an independent assessment of the Jones family. But Alex's attempts to find the answers and save a young girl's life will reveal a terrifying circle of corruption, abuse and murderous hatred.

It came in a plain brown wrapper, no return address—an audiocassette recording of a horrifying, soul-lacerating scream, followed by the sound of a childlike voice chanting: “Bad love. Bad love. Don’t give me the bad love.” For Alex Delaware the tape is the first intimation that he is about to enter a living nightmare. Others soon follow: disquieting laughter echoing over a phone line that suddenly goes dead, and a chilling act of trespass and vandalism. He has become the target of a carefully orchestrated campaign of vague threats and intimidation rapidly building to a crescendo as harassment turns to terror, mischief to madness.

Psychologist-detective Dr. Alex Delaware finds terror in the heart of paradise in this relentlessly sinister novel by America's premier writer of psychological suspense. Three months in paradise, all expenses paid. It's an invitation Alex Delaware can't refuse. Dr. Woodrow Wilson Moreland, a revered scientist and philanthropist on the tiny Pacific island of Aruk, has invited Alex to his home to help him organize his papers for publication--a light workload leaving Alex plenty of time to enjoy a romantic interlude with Robin Castagna.Quickly, however, secretive houseguests, frightening nocturnal visitors, and the elusive Dr. Moreland himself dim the pleasures of deep blue water and white sand.The cases Moreland chooses to share--a patient driven to madness by a cruel, unspeakable act; a man who succumbed forty years ago to radiation poisoning after a nuclear blast; a young woman, brutally murdered, whose mutilated body was found on the beach just six months before--seem unconnected. And yet Alex can't help wondering what the good doctor is trying to tell him… and what Moreland's real reason for inviting him to Aruk is.As Alex probes--with a little long-distance help from his friend LAPD detective Milo Sturgis--he comes to believe the answer lies hidden somewhere on Moreland's vast estate. Yet when he finally discovers the truth, the revelation will be more shocking than he could have imagined. And it will come too late to stem the tide of violence that threatens guilty and innocent alike on the lovely lost island of Aruk.

The daughter of a diplomat disappears on a school field trip—lured into the Santa Monica Mountains and killed in cold blood. Her father denies the possibility of a political motive. There are no signs of struggle and no evidence of sexual assault, leaving psychologist Alex Delaware and his friend LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis to pose the essential question: Why?

A corpse is found in a car trunk. The victim was a twenty-five-year-old would-be actor called Richard Dada. He had been sawn in half. Eight months later, the body of Claire Argent, a psychologist at a hospital for the criminally insane, is discovered. She was mutilated in the same horrific way.

Detective Milo Sturgis is put on the case and, when the incoherent ramblings of a patient locked up in a mental hospital for the criminally insane begin to make terrifying sense, he calls on psychologist Alex Delaware to help him delve into the muddy waters of insanity.

Can Alex and Milo unravel this dark web of family secrets, vengeance and manipulation in time to stop further killing?

People are voluntarily dying before their time in California. Some call it assisted suicide when cancer, heart disease or painful old age make the quality of life unbearable. Others say it is murder, that no-one has the right to help others take their own life.As the debate rages over whether euthanasia should be legalised or not, the man at the centre of the row, nicknamed Doctor Death, continues his work. Dr Alex Delaware joins in the argument, but when Detective Milo Sturgis comes to him with the suspicion that some of Doctor Death's patients are not willing collaborators, Delaware finds himself on the frontline of the affair, and increasingly believes that euthanasia is not the prime motivation. So what is driving Doctor Death to kill so many?

The nightmare begins when Alex receives a strange package in the mail with no return address. Inside is an ornate album filled with gruesome crime scene photos—a homicide scrapbook entitled The Murder Book. Alex can find no reason for anyone to send him this compendium of death, but when Milo views the book, he is immediately shaken by one of the images: a young woman, tortured, strangled, and dumped near a freeway ramp.This was one of Milo’s first cases as a rookie homicide cop: a vicious killing that he failed to solve, because just as he and his training partner began to make headway, the department closed them down. Being forced to abandon the young victim tormented Milo. But his fears prevented him from pursuing the truth, and over the years he managed to forget. Or so he thought.Now, two decades later, someone has chosen to stir up the past. As Alex and Milo set out to uncover what really happened twenty years ago, their every move is followed and their lives are placed in jeopardy. The relentless investigation reaches deep into L.A.’s nerve-centers of power and wealth—past and present. While peeling back layer after layer of ugly secrets, they discover that the murder of one forgotten girl has chilling ramifications that extend far beyond the tragic loss of a single life.

'Kellerman always delivers the goods' Independent on Sunday When psychologist Dr Jeremy Carrier's romance with nurse Jocelyn Banks is cut short by her kidnapping and brutal murder, he is left emotionally devastated and being watched by police seeking a prime suspect in the unsolved killing. When more women turn up murdered in the same gruesome fashion, the only way for Jeremy to prove his innocence is to follow the trail of a cunning psychopath. Spurring on Jeremy's investigation is Dr Arthur Chess, an enigmatic pathologist who draws Jeremy into the confidence of a cryptic society. But when Arthur suddenly slips away, Jeremy is left to contend with an onslaught of anonymous clues - and the growing realization that a harrowing game of cat and mouse has been started.

Lifeless bodies sprawl in a dance-club parking lot after a brutal L.A. drive-by. Of the four seemingly random victims, one stands out: a girl with pink shoes who cannot be identified–and who, days later, remains a Jane Doe. With zero leads and no apparent motive, it’s another case destined for the cold file–until Petra decides to follow her instincts and descends into a world of traveling grifters and bloodthirsty killers, pursuing a possible eyewitness whose life is in mortal danger.Finding her elusive quarry–alive–isn’t all Petra has on her plate: departmental politics threatens to sabotage her case, and her personal life isn’t doing much better. If all that wasn’t enough, Isaac Gomez, a whiz-kid grad student researching homicide statistics at the station house, is convinced he’s stumbled upon a bizarre connection between several unsolved murders. The victims had nothing in common, yet each died by the same method, on the same date–a date that’s rapidly approaching again. And that leaves Petra with little time to unravel the twisted logic of a cunning predator who’s evaded detection for years–and whose terrible hour is once more at hand.

Missing acting students Dylan and Michaela are found in the remote mountains of Malibu, battered and terrified after a harrowing ordeal at the hands of a sadistic abductor. But forensic evidence soon exposes the incident as a hoax, and the kids are charged as criminals themselves.

Tanya Bigelow was a solemn little girl when Dr. Alex Delaware successfully treated her obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Now, at nineteen, Tanya returns with a curious request: that Delaware investigate her aunt’s deathbed confession of murder. While Delaware doubts that Patty Bigelow was capable of such a horrific act, he agrees to look into the matter. Armed with only the vaguest details, Delaware and LAPD detective Milo Stugris retrace Patty’s and Tanya’s nomadic and increasingly puzzling life. Then a very real murder tears open a terrifying tunnel into the past, where secrets—and bodies—are buried. As the tension mounts, Delaware and Sturgis uncover a tangled history of desperation, vengeance, and death—a legacy of evil that refuses to die.

The anonymous caller has an ominous tone and an unnerving message about something “real dead . . . buried in your marsh.” The eco-volunteer on the other end of the phone thinks it’s a prank, but when a young woman’s body turns up in L.A.’s Bird Marsh preserve no one’s laughing. And when the bones of more victims surface, homicide detective Milo Sturgis realizes the city’s under siege to an insidious killer. Milo’s first move: calling in psychologist Alex Delaware.The murdered women are prostitutes–except the most recent victim; a brilliant young musician from the East Coast, employed by a wealthy family to tutor a musical prodigy, Selena Bass seems out of place in the marsh’s grim tableau.Conveniently–perhaps ominously–Selena’s blueblood employers are nowhere to be found, and their estate’ s jittery caretaker raises hackles. But Milo’s instincts and Alex’s insight are too well-honed to settle for easy answers, even given the dark secrets in this troubled man’s past. Their investigation unearths disturbing layers–about victims, potential victims, and suspects alike–plunging even deeper into the murky marsh’s enigmatic depths.Bizarre details of the crimes suggest a devilish serial killer prowling L.A.’s gritty streets. But when a new murder deviates from the pattern, derailing a possible profile, Alex and Milo must look beyond the suspicion of madness and consider an even more sinister mind at work. Answers don’t come easy, but the darkest of drives and desires may fuel the most devious of foes.

In a half-built mansion in Los Angeles, a watchman stumbles onto the bodies of a young couple—murdered and left in a gruesome postmortem embrace. Veteran homicide cop Milo Sturgis is shocked at the sight: a twisted crime that only Milo and psychologist Alex Delaware can hope to solve. While the female victim’s identity remains in question, her companion is ID’d as eco-friendly architect Desmond Backer, notorious for his power to seduce women. The deeper Milo and Alex dig for clues, the longer the list of suspects grows. But when the investigation veers suddenly in a startling direction, it’s the investigators who may wind up on the wrong end of a cornered predator’s final fury.

Her name is Elise Freeman, and her chilling cry for help comes too late to save her. On a DVD found near her lifeless body, the emotionally and physically battered woman chronicles a long ordeal of abuse at the hands of three sadistic tormentors. But even more shocking is the revelation that the offenders, like their victim, are teachers at one of L.A.’s most prestigious prep schools. Homicide detective Milo Sturgis is assigned to probe the hallowed halls of Windsor Prep Academy, and if ever he could use Dr. Alex Delaware’s psychological prowess, it’s now. As the scandal-conscious elite close ranks around Windsor Prep, Alex and Milo push to expose the dirty secrets festering among society’s manor-born. But while searching for predators among the privileged, Alex and Milo may be walking into a highly polished death trap.

Acid-tongued Vita Berlin hadn’t a friend in the world, but whom did she cross so badly as to end up meticulously arranged in such a gruesome murder scene? One look prompts LAPD detective Milo Sturgis to summon his expert in homicidal maniacs, Alex Delaware. But even Alex is stymied when more slayings occur in the same ghastly fashion—with no apparent connection among the victims. And the only clue left behind—a blank page bearing a question mark—seems to be both a menacing taunt and a chilling cry for help from a tortured, savage soul. To end the bloody spree and prevent citywide panic, Alex navigates the secretive world of mental health treatment, from the sleek office of a Beverly Hills therapist to a shuttered mental institution where he once learned his craft. As each jagged piece of the puzzle fits into place, a portrait emerges of a sinister mind at its most unimaginable—and an evil soul at its most unspeakable.

The City of Angels has more than its share of psychopaths, and no one recognizes that more acutely than the brilliant psychologist and police consultant Dr. Alex Delaware. Despite that, Constance Sykes, a sophisticated, successful physician, hardly seems like someone Alex needs to fear. Then, at the behest of the court, he becomes embroiled in a bizarre child custody dispute initiated by Connie against her sister and begins to realize that there is much about the siblings he has failed to comprehend. And when the court battle between the Sykes sisters erupts into cold, calculating murder and a rapidly growing number of victims, Alex knows he’s been snared in a toxic web of pathology. Nothing would please Alex more than to be free of the ugly spectacle known as Sykes v. Sykes. But then the little girl at the center of the vicious dispute disappears and Alex knows he must work with longtime friend Detective Milo Sturgis, braving an obstacle course of  Hollywood washouts, gangbangers, and self-serving jurists in order to save an innocent life.

Jonathan Kellerman writes razor-sharp novels that cut to the quick. Now comes Motive, which pits psychologist Alex Delaware and homicide cop Milo Sturgis against a vicious criminal mind—the kind only Kellerman can bring to chilling life. Even having hundreds of closed cases to his credit can’t keep LAPD police lieutenant Milo Sturgis from agonizing over the crimes that don’t get solved—and the victims who go without justice. Victims like Katherine Hennepin, a young woman strangled and stabbed in her home. A single suspect with a solid alibi leads to a dead end—one even Alex Delaware’s expert insight can’t explain. The only thing to do is move on to the next murder case—because there’s always a next one. This time the victim is Ursula Corey: a successful, attractive divorcée who’s been gunned down—not a robbery but an execution, a crime that smacks of simple, savage revenge. And along with that theoretical motive come two strong contenders for the role of perp: the dead woman’s business partner/ex-husband and her divorce lawyer/secret lover. But just as Alex and Milo think they’re zeroing in on the most likely suspect, a bizarre new clue stirs up eerie echoes of the unsolved Hennepin murder. And the discovery of yet another crime scene bearing the same taunting signature raises the specter of a serial killer on a mission, whose twisted method is exceeded only by his manipulative and cunning madness.

It’s the summer of 1965, and Malcolm Bluestone, fresh out of Harvard and bound for law school, is taking a break—from the books and Brooklyn—to soak in the sun and sights of California. Free from his doting parents, he’s enjoying a whirlwind tour of his older brother Steve’s glamorous movie-star lifestyle. Yet all the excitement only seems to leave Malcolm feeling haunted by the sheltered, studious life he leads—and trapped by the secure but predictable future that awaits him. It is a future he has the power to change, if he’s brave enough to dare and wise enough, like his brother, to listen to his heart. But it will take a shocking incident on a movie set to finally spur Malcolm to action—and free him to walk the path he knows he was meant to.

A brilliant, deeply dedicated psychologist, Grace Blades has a gift for treating troubled souls and tormented psyches—perhaps because she bears her own invisible scars: Only five years old when she witnessed her parents’ deaths in a bloody murder-suicide, Grace took refuge in her fierce intellect and found comfort in the loving couple who adopted her. But even as an adult with an accomplished professional life, Grace still has a dark, secret side. When her two worlds shockingly converge, Grace’s harrowing past returns with a vengeance. Both Grace and her newest patient are stunned when they recognize each other from a recent encounter. Haunted by his bleak past, mild-mannered Andrew Toner is desperate for Grace’s renowned therapeutic expertise and more than willing to ignore their connection. And while Grace is tempted to explore his case, which seems to eerily echo her grim early years, she refuses—a decision she regrets when a homicide detective appears on her doorstep. An evil she thought she’d outrun has reared its head again, but Grace fears that a police inquiry will expose her double life. Launching her own personal investigation leads her to a murderously manipulative foe, one whose warped craving for power forces Grace back into the chaos and madness she’d long ago fled.

Natural causes or foul play? That’s the question Clay Edison must answer each time he examines a body. Figuring out motives and chasing down suspects aren’t part of his beat—not until a seemingly open-and-shut case proves to be more than meets his highly trained eye.Eccentric, reclusive Walter Rennert lies cold at the bottom of his stairs. At first glance the scene looks straightforward: a once-respected psychology professor, done in by booze and a bad heart. But his daughter Tatiana insists that her father has been murdered, and she persuades Clay to take a closer look at the grim facts of Rennert’s life.What emerges is a history of scandal and violence, and an experiment gone horribly wrong that ended in the brutal murder of a coed. Walter Rennert, it appears, was a broken man—and maybe a marked one. And when Clay learns that a colleague of Rennert’s died in a nearly identical manner, he begins to question everything in the official record.All the while, his relationship with Tatiana is evolving into something forbidden. The closer they grow, the more determined he becomes to catch her father’s killer—even if he has to overstep his bounds to do it.The twisting trail Clay follows will lead him into the darkest corners of the human soul. It’s his job to listen to the tales the dead tell. But this time, he’s part of a story that makes his blood run cold.

Former star basketball player Clay Edison is busy. He’s solved a decades-old crime and redeemed an innocent man, earning himself a suspension in the process. Things are getting serious with his girlfriend. Plus his brother’s fresh out of prison, bringing with him a whole new set of complications.Then the phone rings in the dead of night.A wild party in a gentrifying East Bay neighborhood. A heated argument that spills into the street. Gunshots. Chaos.For Clay and his fellow coroners, it’s the start of a long night and the first of many to come. The victims keep piling up. What begins as a community tragedy soon becomes lurid fodder for social media.Then the smoke clears and the real mystery emerges—one victim’s death doesn’t match the others. Brutalized and abandoned, stripped of ID, and left to die: She is Jane Doe, a human question mark. And it falls to Clay to give her a name and a voice.Haunted by the cruelty of her death, he embarks upon a journey into the bizarre, entering a hidden world where innocence and perversity meet and mingle. There, his relentless pursuit of the truth opens the gateway to a dark and baffling past—and brings him right into the line of fire.

LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis has solved a lot of murder cases. On many of them—the ones he calls “different”—he taps the brain of brilliant psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware. But neither Alex nor Milo are prepared for what they find on an early morning call to a deserted mansion in Bel Air. This one’s beyond different. This is predation, premeditation, and cruelty on a whole new level.Four people have been slaughtered and left displayed bizarrely and horrifically in a stretch limousine. Confounding the investigation, none of the victims seems to have any connection to any other, and a variety of methods have been used to dispatch them. As Alex and Milo make their way through blind alleys and mazes baited with misdirection, they encounter a crime so vicious that it stretches the definitions of evil.

LAPD homicide lieutenant Milo Sturgis is a master detective. He has a near-perfect solve rate and he’s written his own rule book. Some of those successes—the toughest ones—have involved his best friend, the brilliant psychologist Alex Delaware. But Milo doesn’t call Alex in unless cases are “different.”This murder warrants an immediate call. Milo’s independence has been compromised as never before, as the department pressures him to cater to the demands of a mogul: a hard-to-fathom, megarich young woman who is obsessed with reopening the coldest of cases—the decades-old death of the mother she never knew.The facts describe a likely loser: a mysterious woman found with a bullet in her head in a torched Cadillac that has overturned on infamously treacherous Mulholland Drive. No physical evidence, no witnesses, no apparent motive. And a slew of detectives have already worked the case and failed. But as Delaware and Sturgis begin digging, the mist begins to lift. Too many coincidences. Facts turn out to be anything but. And as they soon discover, very real threats lurking in the present.This is Delaware/Sturgis at their best: traversing the beautiful but forbidding place known as Los Angeles and exhuming the past in order to bring a vicious killer to justice.

Los Angeles is a city of sunlight, celebrity, and possibility. The L.A. often experienced by Homicide Lt. Detective Milo Sturgis and psychologist Alex Delaware, is a city of the dead. Early one morning, the two of them find themselves in a neighborhood of pretty houses, pretty cars, and pretty people. The scene they encounter is anything but. A naked young man lies dead in the street, the apparent victim of a collision with a moving van hurtling through suburbia in the darkness. But any thoughts of accidental death vanish when a blood trail leads to a nearby home. Inside, a young woman lies butchered. The identity of the male victim and his role in the horror remain elusive, but that of the woman creates additional questions. And adding to the shock, Alex has met her while working a convoluted child custody case. Cordelia Gannett was a self-styled internet influencer who’d gotten into legal troubles by palming herself off as a psychologist. Even after promising to desist, she’s found a loophole and has continued her online career, aiming to amass clicks and ads by cyber-coaching and cyber-counseling people plagued with relationship issues. But upon closer examination, Alex and Milo discover that her own relationships are troublesome, including a tortured family history and a dubious personal past. Has that come back to haunt her in the worst way? Is the mystery man out in the street collateral damage or will he turn out to be the key to solving a grisly double homicide? As the psychologist and the detective explore L.A.'s meanest streets, they peel back layer after layer of secrets and encounter a savage, psychologically twisted, almost unthinkable motive for violence and bloodshed.

It's been almost a year since Clay Edison was forced out of his job at the coroner's bureau. Now he's on his own, working as a private eye. When a client brings him a fraud case, Clay dives into a decades-old scheme targeting the vulnerable. His investigation leads him to a bizarre town buried in the remote California wilderness. The residents don't care much for outsiders. They certainly don't like Clay asking questions. And they'll do just about anything to shut him up.